High­est rate of un­em­ployed

THE Wide Bay area is in a job cri­sis and our politi­cians were point­ing the fin­ger at each other.

Fig­ures from the Aus­tralian Bureau of Sta­tis­tics were re­leased stat­ing the Wide Bay had the high­est re­gional un­em­ploy­ment rate in the na­tion, sit­ting at an av­er­age of 10.5% in the past 12 months.

Mem­ber for Bur­nett Stephen Ben­nett said the lat­est fig­ures were dis­ap­point­ing and re­flec­tive of lo­cal Mem­ber for Bund­aberg Leanne Don­ald­son’s lack of plan­ning for the re­gion.

“It has been nine months since the elec­tion and the lo­cal Mem­ber for Bund­aberg has failed to de­liver any projects to cre­ate more jobs in this area,” Mr Ben­nett said.

“Can Leanne Don­ald­son name one project that she has de­liv­ered for Bund­aberg?”

But Ms Don­ald­son said that, de­spite the Wide Bay hav­ing the worst un­em­ploy­ment rate in the na­tion, things had im­proved.

“The rate of un­em­ploy­ment was 11.4% this time last year, it has de­creased to 10.5%,” she said.

“In the Wide Bay, 2200 jobs have been cre­ated in the past 12 months.

“It is a shame the Mem­ber for Bur­nett con­tin­u­ally paints our re­gion in a neg­a­tive light. I have con­tin­u­ally asked him to work with me to work for our com­mu­nity but this falls on deaf ears as he is more in­ter­ested in scor­ing cheap po­lit­i­cal points than work­ing con­struc­tively lo­cally.”